


Exit Protocol

by Beleriandings



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Canon compliant-ish, F/F, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Not A Fix-It, Post-Episode: s02e13 Exit Wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29541201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: Not long after the deaths of Tosh and Owen, Gwen gets a message from an unnamed user on the Hub system. Thatreallyshouldn't happen.And yet, there it is.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper & Toshiko Sato, Gwen Cooper/Toshiko Sato
Comments: 10
Kudos: 17
Collections: Torchwood Fan Fests: 2021 Femslash Fest





	Exit Protocol

**Author's Note:**

> This story draws somewhat from events that happen in the Big Finish audio Cascade (aka torchwood_cascade_CDRIP.tor) though I think that no knowledge of this is required; I tried to make it so that what happens in the fic is largely self-explanatory. However, please beware of mild spoilers for that audio!
> 
> Written for the Torchwood Fan Fests Femslash Fest 2021, with no specific prompts.

It started with the message.

Gwen been spending a lot of time sending emails, in the last week since the explosions that had devastated the city, liasing with various police officers and representatives of this and that, business and civil officials and other such types. Jack had been in a string of awful moods lately – and really Gwen sympathised, but God, this was hard – and Ianto had been run off his feet with work of his own, desperately trying to pretend everything was normal while running himself ragged. She’d caught him sobbing in the archives yesterday and he’d snapped at her, chilly and haughty and embarrassed, and she’d snapped back, her frustration coming out all at once. They’d barely spoken since, not that they’d had much time even if they’d wanted to.

Gwen felt a little guilty about it in hindsight, as she did about the furious row she’d had with Jack the day before yesterday over hardly anything at all. Indeed, in the few quiet moments between weevil sightings and Rift alerts and other call-outs, they’d all been arguing with one another, little spats breaking out between them much easier in the fraught atmosphere of grief and exhaustion that hung over the Hub. Today she’d heard Jack and Ianto having sharp words through the wall of the office, and had wanted to cover her ears, or else knock their heads together; she was just so sick of it all.

So in the end, rather than listen to them and get involved herself, Gwen had taken as much of the work on herself as she could and left them to get on with it. Once she sat down at her computer though, she found she couldn’t face it; not yet, at least. Her head ached, her eyes prickling with tiredness from another bad night of sleep last night, tossing and turning beside Rhys before crawling out of bed to start all over again.

She was procrastinating, scrolling idly through her email inbox and wondering if she might go out and talk to the police in person – maybe pick up lunch and coffees on the way back, save Ianto from having to do it as something of a peace offering – if she stayed on call, when the Hub’s internal messaging system popped up in the corner of her screen.

**1 new message from [ ].**

Gwen frowned, hovering her cursor over it. She could still hear Jack and Ianto’s voices muffled from the other room, though now they’d quieted a little, clearly past the worst of their argument, if that was what it was.

It wasn’t them, that was for sure. Jack and Ianto had their own user accounts on Mainframe. If it was from either of them, it would say.

A slight sense of disquiet crept over Gwen. Yet still, she hesitated only a moment longer before she clicked on the chat box, and read.

**[ ]: Hello, Gwen? Are you there?**

She frowned, hesitating for a moment, then typed a reply.

**[Gwen Cooper]: who is this?**

There was a momentary pause. Then, a new message popped up.

**[ ]: It’s Tosh**

Gwen pushed herself abruptly back from the computer on her rolling chair, eyes widening, unnerved. A moment later though, it had passed and she was more angry than anything else, tears prickling her eyes all over again as she typed in the box.

**[Gwen Cooper]: impersonating a dead woman? that’s sick  
  
[Gwen Cooper]: who is this really? **

**[Gwen Cooper]: how did you hack into our computer system?**

With a stab of sorrow, Gwen wondered if they’d have to try to tighten security themselves; she didn’t know nearly as much as she should about the Hub’s digital security infrastructure. She’d never really needed to before. She suspected both Jack and Ianto knew slightly more, but still. Keeping them safe from hacking attempts had always been Tosh’s job. She shook her head, seeing that whoever it was was typing again. There was a pause, Gwen’s heart in her throat as she read the new message that popped up.

**[ ]: It’s really me. Or at least, a copy of me. You initiated final shutdown of my user account, so I can’t use that, sorry. This is a temporary guest login I set up to talk to you**

There was a slight pause, as Gwen thought back to the day she had stood with Jack and Ianto and watched Tosh’s final message video; she still replayed it sometimes, though it hurt her.

Another message popped up.

**[ ]: Feels kind of appropriate I guess :’)**

Gwen frowned. But something had lit in her heart, some small spark of hope.

**[Gwen Cooper]: I’m not saying I believe you. but explain from the beginning**

**[Gwen Cooper]: please?**

**[ ]: Okay, yeah, sorry! What happened was this. A while ago for you I suppose, I went on this mission in London. The reason doesn’t matter now, but long story short, I had to upload a version of my consciousness to the Hub’s computers. It’s still here. That’s who I am.**

**[Gwen Cooper]: You’re Tosh? You’re not dead???**

**[ ]: Well, sort of. I mean, I suppose it’s a matter of definitions**

**[Gwen Cooper]: What?**

**[ ]: Toshiko Sato is dead, so I’m the only version of me left**

**[ ]: … I suppose it sounds rather lonely when you put it like that**

Gwen realised she was gaping at the screen, tears in her eyes. But still, she couldn’t let her emotions get the better of her; she knew this wasn’t necessarily what she thought. She had to check.

**[Gwen Cooper]: okay, if you’re really Tosh, tell me something only Tosh would know about me**

**[ ]: That’s easy. You’re Gwen Cooper, former police officer. Jack recruited you after you saw Suzie use the resurrection glove on a man she’d murdered. Then you followed us home. Jack gave you Retcon, but you broke through it when Suzie shot herself, so he hired you to replace her.**

**[ ]: Is that enough?**

**[Gwen Cooper]: that’s all information a hacker could technically find in our recruitment records**

**[Gwen Cooper]: tell me something else**

**[Gwen Cooper]: something more personal**

**[ ]: Okay. Sorry, never was so good at that**

**[ ]: Okay, you have a fiance called Rhys Williams… maybe you’ve married him by now actually. Wait, yes you have, I remember now that I did access the records from what happened at the wedding. Time doesn’t feel real in here, sometimes.**

**[ ]: Sorry, that was record information too, hang on, give me a second. You know how I am.**

**[ ]: You’re Gwen Cooper, and you’re the kindest person I know. Whenever it’s someone’s birthday you bring in a box of Celebrations to put in the kitchen, Owen teases you that it’s like being in primary school around here. But I always thought it was nice, especially because you save people’s favourite flavours for them.**

**[ ]: You don’t take shit from anyone, human or alien or anyone at all. It always impressed me. Remember when that bigwig from UNIT was giving Ianto a rough time on the phone for being “just the secretary” while Jack was away and Ianto was taking his calls? One day you just grabbed the phone from Ianto and gave that man an earful, telling him that Ianto was more experienced and smarter and better than he was, and he would listen to him or leave us alone, thank you very much. Except in slightly less polite words. We all had a laugh about it at the time, but it definitely worked!**

**[ ]: You like pineapple on pizza and Owen doesn’t and the two of you have multiple times threatened to throw each other off the roof of the Millennium Centre over it :D**

**[ ]: You were struggling, after you joined. I could see it in hindsight, but I didn’t say anything then because I never knew how to, you know? Too angry at you, angry at Owen, self-pitying. But you must have been struggling. And I do understand, it’s a lot when you start. I’m sorry. But you didn’t need me in the end, did you? You fixed everything, you chose the life you wanted in the end. I always wished I could be that strong, that decisive. I wanted to be able to pick myself up when I fell.**

**[ ]: After Jack killed Mary you told me love suited me, and despite everything, despite how much of a horrible time we’d had and all the shit I’d heard while wearing the pendant, I think I fell a little bit for you right there and then. You give me hope, Gwen.**

**[ ]: Is that enough?**

Gwen was staring at the computer, tears rolling down her face and splashing onto her keyboard. Very slowly, almost tentatively, she began to type again.

**[Gwen Cooper]: Tosh? it’s really you?**

**[ ]: A version of me, at least. Hello, Gwen.**

She let out her breath in a gasp, loud in the quietness of the Hub, as the reality of it set in. Then she collected herself, starting to type.

**[Gwen Cooper]: are you alright? this is going to sound stupid, but is it okay where you are?**

**[Gwen Cooper]: what I mean is, is there anything I can do to help you?**

There was a longer pause this time, as though she was thinking about it.

**[ ]: I don’t know. It’s nice to just speak to you. It gets so terribly lonely sometimes, here.**

**[Gwen Cooper]: I’m here, love. I’m so sorry for what’s happened. that we couldn’t save you**

**[Gwen Cooper]: I’m sorry you were in pain at the end**

**[ ]: It’s okay, Gwen. The Tosh that died in the Hub wasn’t me, not really. I didn’t feel that part**

**[ ]: But thank you anyway <3**

“Gwen? What’s going on?”

She whirled around, startled out of her reverie by the sound of Jack’s voice. She saw him approaching her from across the Hub, Ianto following a few feet behind. Clearly whatever was between them had been settled, but they both had slightly tear-reddened eyes. She shifted a little, trying to subtly get between them and the screen; she found she didn’t want to spring this on them, not like this.

But of course, Jack immediately noticed her movement. He frowned, ducking around her to look at the computer screen. “Who’re you talking to?”

“No one,” said Gwen, too quickly.

“That’s the internal messaging system. No one should be on that but you, me, and Ianto.” He was starting to look a little bit alarmed, exchanging a look with Ianto, who was frowning minutely.

She opened her mouth, and closed it again. “Jack...” she managed. Then she sighed, and made a decision, pulling her screen around so they could both look at it too. “It’s Tosh.”

Jack’s face softened. “Gwen...” he began, gratingly sympathetic.

“No, look!” She jabbed a finger at the screen. “Read it.”

There was silence for a moment, as Jack and Ianto both leaned close to read. She watched their faces as they did. Jack’s expression remaining impassive yet somehow more and more brittle with every passing word, the pain he’d been carrying rising up again. Ianto’s features twitched into a look of sorrow; she knew Tosh had been his dear friend too, knew how important she’d been to both of them.

“See?” said Gwen, when they were finished reading. “It’s her!”

Jack turned to look at Gwen, indicating the keyboard. “Can I…?”

Gwen nodded, pushing it over to him, and he began to type.

**[Gwen Cooper]: Hello, Tosh. It’s Jack.**

**[ ]: !!!!!**

**[ ]: Hi, Jack! I missed you. Are you okay?**

**[Gwen Cooper]: Just fine, as always. Ianto too. He says hello.**

Gwen saw Ianto nod and give an unsteady smile, standing with a stiff back, as though if he allowed himself to lean forward he’d break apart.

Gwen stood up and went to stand beside him, letting Jack have her chair as he typed at her computer. She took Ianto’s hand quietly; their petty argument from the day before seemed meaningless now, stupid. To her great relief he seemed to agree, and squeezed her fingers back in unspoken acknowledgement without looking away from the screen. She smiled slightly; from Ianto, that was as good as a hug.

Finally, Jack turned away from the computer with a sigh. “Seems like she’s telling the truth.”

“It’s really Tosh, then?” said Ianto, his voice carefully modulated.

Jack nodded, standing up from the desk chair and folding his arms thoughtfully. “A copy of her at least, saved to Mainframe’s short-term temporary storage.”

“Well, what are we going to do?” Gwen demanded. “Can we… I dunno. Put her in a new body?”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “If you can think of a way, I’m all ears.”

“Come on, Jack. You know about alien technology, and future stuff. There’s got to something.”

He sighed. “There are technologies like that, in the future. But we don’t have access to them here. So, unless something falls through the Rift some day...” he shrugged, looking heartbroken. “I’m sorry.”

“So, what, we just leave her there?” Gwen swallowed back tears, letting go of Ianto and stepping up beside Jack again. “She’s trapped in there. She’s _lonely_ , Jack. What can we do to help her?”

“We can be here for her.”

“I meant more than that.”

He was frowning, shaking his head. “Nothing,” he said quietly, reaching out and pulling her against his side. “There’s nothing, Gwen. I’m sorry.”

She laid her forehead against his shoulder and pressed hard against it, letting her tears soak into the fabric of his shirt. “There’s got to be something,” she whispered. “There’s always something. Something we can do to free her.”

“Gwen... I am _sorry_ , but there’s nothing–”

“Um.” A small noise from behind her, the familiar sound of Ianto clearing his throat. “What if there was something.”

They both turned to look at him. He was standing a short way off, hands clasped awkwardly behind his back. His eyes were still a little red, and Gwen could see them glittering with tears of his own, but he hadn’t let them fall yet.

“What do you mean?” said Jack, frowning.

“What if...” Ianto took a breath. “What if there was another way to speak to her.”

Gwen exchanged a look with Jack. “Then we’d have to take it!”

“But there isn’t,” said Jack. “...Is there?”

“I don’t know for certain whether it’ll work.” Ianto shuffled his feet. “I’ve got a theory.”

Gwen caught Jack’s eye, and he held her gaze for a long moment, and sighed before turning back to Ianto. “Explain.”

“Okay, so. Remember when we sent Tommy back to his own time…?”

* * *

After Ianto explained his plan, it hadn’t taken long to put it into practice; in fact, the hardest part had been for Gwen to convince Jack to let them try it. Even now he was still clearly in two minds, pacing the medbay in obvious agitation.

“Are you sure you’re okay in there?” said Jack, apprehensively checking the controls for the mind probe once more. They’d modified it once to allow Tosh to appear as a psychic projection, all those months ago; it had actually been surprisingly easy to do it again, to link it to Mainframe’s data core, rather than another living person. “This is risky, you know. The computer isn’t designed to hold the consciousness of a living person; that’s a lot of data. We don’t know what could happen.”

“Well, then maybe Tosh shouldn’t be there either.”

Jack looked pained. “Look, maybe I should be the one to–”

She glared him into abrupt silence. “Jack, you put Beth through something like this. ...Tosh... did this for Tommy, too. I’m strong, just like they were. I can deal with it.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean–” he relented, seeing her expression. “Okay. Well, just let us know if anything’s wrong.”

She nodded, accepting a sip of water from the cup Ianto offered, meeting his eye with a sad smile. There was a current of understanding that passed between them in that moment, half simple acknowledgement, half a sort of unspoken pact as he put the cup to one side and lowered the metal cap onto her head, carefully making sure it didn’t snag and tangle in her hair as he applied the electrodes to her forehead and temples.

It would have been Owen doing that once, Gwen couldn’t help but think; she knew Ianto was probably thinking exactly the same.

Then the moment was over, and Ianto was stepping back with a stiff, tense nod to let Jack give the equipment a final check over.

“You ready?”

Gwen took a deep breath, thinking of Tosh, and why she was doing this. “I’m ready.”

Jack nodded over at Ianto, who started the machine, powering it up with a whirring vibration that Gwen felt extending first through her whole body, then through her very mind itself. She felt her heart go to her throat in sudden doubt at the unfamiliarity of it; it felt like her head was filling with static, her vision blurring and erupting with phosphenes as she squeezed her eyes closed reflexively, the glowing patterns geometric but oddly warped.

She felt her body tense, and the impulse briefly flashed through her mind to yell out to Ianto to power down the machine, to pull the plug. But no, she couldn’t, there was still Tosh… and besides, a moment later the dizzying sensation had passed, the static washing over her and forming into a new scene when she hesitantly opened her eyes.

Gwen blinked, raising her head. There was a disorientating moment as she realised she was not where she had been. She was in the Hub still, but rather than sitting in the medbay she was standing beside Tosh’s desk. She looked all around her for a moment, rather than look at the desk directly; she didn’t want to look at it just yet, not after having tidied away Tosh’s things from it that first day, taken down her dog-eared photos, peeled off the blue-tack and put away the keepsakes, spare electrical components and Post-it notes to herself, and the pack of biscuits she kept in the drawer for emergencies.

Gwen shook her head. She couldn’t let the memories get to her now; she didn’t know how much time she had here.

Wherever _here_ really was. She squinted all around her, noticing nothing that struck her as out of the ordinary except perhaps for the quiet. She looked around for Jack and Ianto, calling their names softly.

No answer. It really was very quiet for the Hub, she thought. Even the background splashing from the water tower and the hum of the computers sounded oddly muted, her voice falling flat too, and something made her not want to disturb the hush again just yet. And somehow, it didn’t surprise her that neither Jack or Ianto answered. She knew without quite knowing how that they were not here.

Which meant that it had probably worked. Which in turn meant that she was not really in the Hub at all; or rather, her body was in the Hub, and technically her consciousness was too, she supposed. But in reality, this all existed inside the computer, a sophisticated illusion made of pixels and data, maintained by the processing power of the semi-sentient Mainframe system that Torchwood had been maintaining for over a century.

Which, if they were right, was where Tosh was.

She frowned, turning her head and looking around her. Now that she looked again, she could see that it wasn’t exactly a perfect replica of the Hub as Gwen had last seen it. There were still some of the old storage boxes sitting in the corner that Ianto had put there temporarily while doing a clean-out of some of the storage rooms a while ago, as well as Owen’s jacket over one of the chairs, the one he’d had to throw out because it had been damaged beyond repair by an acid-spewing alien… oh, it must have been a few weeks before the Pharm.

Gwen felt a suspicion that she knew what it meant, and a look at the kitchen area confirmed it. There were all their five mugs lined up neatly on the shelf, all at the same angle with their handles outwards. In both realities, Ianto hadn’t put away Tosh’s, or even Owen’s, yet. But in the Hub as she’d left it, he had turned them so that the handles were facing away at a precise angle, she’d noticed earlier. The other three – Gwen’s, Jack’s, and his own – were still lined up like soldiers, perfect and precise in their arrangement.

So, this was before Tosh and Owen, before Gray and John and the explosions, before even Owen’s first death. That made sense; this was a snapshot in time, a moment Tosh had captured in the computer’s memory.

( _Why this moment?_ Gwen wondered. _What made_ _her_ _choose this one?_ She supposed she’d likely never know.)

But as soon as she had that realisation Gwen noticed something else too. The very fabric of everything she saw was not smooth; though everything looked normal from a short distance away, on closer inspection it was somewhat pixelated, like squinting too close to a computer screen. She turned her head to look around her, and as she did she became aware of something at the corner of her vision. She hadn’t noticed it before, but each time she turned there was a brief moment when it seemed like the space behind her was still loading, with a very slight time lag before it came to full, realistic clarity. Indeed, now she’d noticed it she could hardly stop, turning her head in sharp jerks to try to see better; it was rather surreal, and something about it unnerved her.

Frowning, Gwen walked down beside the tide pool and knelt beside it, trailing her hand in the water. Even more unnervingly, it didn’t feel quite as wet as water would be expected to. But also, it didn’t feel quite _unlike_ water either. It slipped over her hand _almost_ as it should, but the coolness she should have felt was dulled, its temperature the same as that of the rest of the room against her skin. And the water didn’t cling either, merely sloughing off her hand in pixelated particles like sand.

“Sorry the graphics aren’t quite up to scratch,” she heard from behind her. “This was all made in a bit of a hurry.”

Gwen froze, her heart in her throat as she recognised the voice, tears already starting in her eyes.

In the pixelated water of the pool, she saw an achingly familiar face reflected. “Tosh...” she whispered, almost afraid that if she spoke too loud in this place, or if she turned to look, Tosh might vanish entirely.

But Tosh’s reflection only smiled. “Hello, Gwen.”

She felt a warm hand on her shoulder then, and that was it. Immediately Gwen stood up, summoning all her courage and turning around. As the space behind her popped into higher resolution, she braced to see no one there, just the empty Hub.

But there was Tosh, standing before her with a smile on her face. “I knew you’d figure it out. I hoped you’d come say hello. Or, um, I suppose, goodbye.”

“Of course!” Gwen insisted, reaching out to take Tosh’s hands. As she did though, Tosh’s whole body shifted and glitched out for a moment, the colours separating into red, green and blue for a few half-instants, before shuddering back into place.

Tosh winced, squeezing Gwen’s hands. “Sorry,” she said, her face twisting as though in pain. “This has been happening more and more, since… well. Since I died.”

Gwen opened her mouth, not knowing what to say. So instead she pulled Tosh into a crushing hug against her chest, burying her face in her hair and pressing a kiss there. It didn’t feel _quite_ like the real Tosh’s hair, but it was close enough for Gwen to start crying into; she even smelled the same, and she was warm, warm like a gently buzzing server bank. “Oh, _Tosh_ ,” Gwen sobbed, losing her composure. “You _died_. I’m so sorry, sweetheart, sorry there was nothing I could do, sorry it ended like this… oh, God, you didn’t deserve that. You deserved to live, to love and be loved back, and we were too late to save you and–” she froze, heart in her mouth as Tosh glitched again; it felt bizarre at such close quarters, like Tosh was fragmenting in her arms. “Oh, God!” she gasped springing back. “Was that because of me? I’m sorry!”

“No, it’s okay,” said Tosh, with a slightly pained smile as she took Gwen’s hands and squeezed them, glitching a few more times; her voice had a slight electronic undertone to it, distorted here and there. “I’m s-so glad to see you again, Gwen. How are Jack and Ianto?”

“Fine! Fine. ...I mean, well, they’re not _fine_ , obviously… we’ve been, um. Struggling a bit. But then we found–”

“My mess-mess-messages,” said Tosh, glitching rather sadly. “Yes. I’m really sorry, Gwen. I didn’t mean… look, I once copied myself into the Mainframe. And I know I didn’t tell you, but my past self wouldn’t have remembered it because I Retconned myself. Will Retcon myself… was planning to Retcon myself.” she must have seen Gwen’s look of confusion, because after recovering from a bout of painful-looking glitching, she sighed. “Look, the only important thing is that, um, I’m not her. I’m a branch of her. But I’m not her.”

“O...okay,” said Gwen, really just wanting to pull Tosh into her arms and give her another crushing hug, but somehow reluctant at the same time. Something else occurred to her. “...Wait, in that case, how do you know she died?”

“I’m installed on Mainframe,” she said. “The system recognised my – her – final logout procedure. That, and all the CCTV is saved to the same database as I am. I can watch everything that’s going on. ...Not much else to do in here, most of the time.”

“Oh,” said Gwen, in a small voice.

“Some of the stuff you went through…” she shook her head. “I’m _sorry_ , Gwen. Especially about what happened to Owen. And Jack… _two thousand years_.” She glitched again a few times. “I’ve-I’ve-Ive only been here a few months and I’m already falling apart.”

She imagined this Tosh, all alone in here, watching them go about their daily lives but cut off from them. The thought hurt. “Wait,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “What do you mean, falling apart?”

“Ah...” Tosh hesitated, looking reluctant.

“Tosh!” begged Gwen. “Please tell me! If it’s something dangerous...”

“No, no! Nothing like that.” Tosh sighed. “...Look, Gwen, what you have to understand is, I’m not the real me. Just a temporary backup copy, not meant to be saved for any length of time. But since… since I died, there’s no body, no current version to scan and use as a reference to correct the gradually building mistakes.”

“...What do you mean?”

“The human body, the living consciousness, is amazing. It repairs itself, always coming back. But I’m just a snapshot, Toshiko Sato on one otherwise unimportant day of her life. I don’t change, and I can’t repair the errors in my code alone.”

Gwen swallowed past the lump in her throat. “If you stay here,” she said quietly, “with everything as it is… what will happen?”

“My code already has errors,” said Tosh. “It’s inevitable, the random quantum fluctuations of atoms on a hard drive. But the longer I stay here in this form, without my reference backup, the more the errors will multiply. I’ll… stop being me.” She held out her hand, and Gwen saw it glitch into pixels for a moment, her voice skipping; she looked genuinely pained by it now. “M-m-my-my code, my code will degrade, will degrade, will degrade, will degrade, over time.”

“Well, we can fix it. You can tell us what to do, and we’ll–”

But Tosh was already shaking her head. “I locked access to my own biometric print. I made sure I’d be the only one who could fix me. I’m losing information, Gwen, and though I can slow that process, I can’t stop it.”

“But you’re...” Gwen frowned. “If you uploaded your consciousness, then surely that means you can live forever?” As soon as she said it, she felt a wash of dread as the implications hit her.

“Maybe so. But I’ll still keep accumulating errors. Over time, even this psychic imprint will fade, and eventually become corrupted.” She looked up at Gwen with sad eyes, her face glitching out and then coming back again. “The very last thing I wanted was to be forced to live forever, especially like that. I think you and I both know that’s not something to be wished for.”

Even in this illusory world, Gwen felt her chest ache. She thought of Jack, forced to outlive everyone he loved, with no chance of reprieve until the world fell to pieces around him. She thought of Owen, the bleak, empty despair that had sometimes crept into his gaze in those last weeks, when she’d known he was wondering what kind of an existence he’d be able to have, how long his body would last and whether one day he’d forget the taste of food, the warm touch of skin and the way it felt to breathe in a clean lungful of air.

It would be the same for Tosh, except she had no body left to be worn away by time; only a disembodied consciousness, writ imperfectly in silicon storage, bound like everything else by the inevitable march of entropy.

Gwen sighed, drawing herself up a little taller. “How can I help?” she asked, pushing away her qualms, all the things she desperately wanted to say instead. She’d already lost Tosh once, and she didn’t know how she’d cope losing her again. But she hardened her heart, forcing herself to give Tosh this. “Do you… want to go?”

“I… think I’d like that, yes. I’m tired, Gwen-en-en-en-en-en-en. I’m _scared_ , and this…” she held up her hand, showing it splitting apart into two bright outlines, before shuddering back together, “this _hurts_. Especially because I… I _remember_ what it was like to be her. T-t-t-t-to be human.”

“You _are_ human!”

Tosh just shook her head. “I’m a digital ghost, Gwen. I’m so-so-so s-s-s-sorry.”

Gwen took a deep breath, collecting herself. For Tosh’s sake. “...How can I set you free?”

“Just… b-b-be here,” she said, voice grating with electronic tones now. “I think… I think it’s because you’re alive, you’re human, and real. This system was never built to-built to-built to-built to-built to-built to-built to-built to deal with that. It’s already degrading the environment.”

Gwen looked around, tearing her gaze away from Tosh, and saw that she was right; the Hub around her seemed to have lost resolution, like a badly compressed image filled with artifacts.

Tosh looked up at her. “So please. Just stay, for a bit?”

“Oh, love. I can do that.” Gwen leaned forward and pulled Tosh into her arms. She felt so real, solid and breathing and warm despite what she knew about this place, about all of this. It was enough to all but break Gwen’s heart.

She pulled back, seeing that Tosh was crying; she wiped the tears off her cheek with the backs of her fingers, falling away like sand, like the water in the pool. But as soon as she brushed them away more came, Tosh’s frame trembling in her grasp, clutching at her. “I’m sca-sca-sca-sca-sca-scared, Gwen,” she said, voice trembling and glitching severely as she clutched at Gwen’s arms. “It hurts… it hurts to stay. But I’m scared to-to-to-to go.”

“I know, sweetheart.” She couldn’t help but think of Tosh dying in Jack’s arms as she and Ianto could only stand and watch, the three of them too late to save her. Maybe this time, she could at least help. “I know.”

“Give Ianto and Jack-ck-ck-ck-ck my l-love.”

“I will.” Gwen’s heart ached. “I wish I could have saved you,” she said, tears flowing down her face. “But I don’t know what to do, Tosh. I’m not clever like you are.”

But Tosh was shaking her head, slow and sad. “You don't need to save me. You alre-re-re-re-ready have.”

“Tosh...”

“I’m… I’m dead. I died. Died-died-died-died-died-died.” She looked afraid as she said it. But brave; she was always, always so brave. “I… I don’t nee-ee-eed you to save me, not like that. I just need you to let me go. Let me go. Let me - Let me - Let me go.”

“But I don’t know how...” but Gwen tailed off, staring at Tosh’s face as something occurred to her. It made her heart break all over again, yet somehow it also made her smile; most of the computer stuff was beyond her, but this felt like something out of a fairytale.

Still, it was worth a try, wasn’t it? If it would help Tosh. She frowned, trying to focus on that; helping Tosh. Stopping her pain, her fear.

She leaned forward and kissed Tosh’s lips, tasting both their warm salty tears mingling together. Tosh kissed her back, slow and achingly sad; almost like an apology. _I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. I’m sorry_ _for everything_ _._ _It should have been different._

Instead she said, against Tosh’s glitching lips, “I love you, sweetheart. You did so, so good. Now you can rest.” And she kissed her one last time, skin no longer feeling real, though still warm with a soft, electronic glow.

Gwen pulled back, to find that what was left of Tosh was smiling.

“Gwen...” she said, the mere sound of Gwen’s name in her voice like a warm caress, smooth and human again for the briefest moment. “ _Thank you_.”

And as she said the word, she began to fade into static. Gwen gasped out, alarmed; now it came to it, she didn’t want to let go of Tosh. But Tosh had already lost her solidity, dissolving into pure pixels before vanishing away to nothing in a twist of light. A moment later the Hub around her was dissolving too, a crackling roar of digital static filling up Gwen’s head, subsuming her like a great wave, carrying her away, until–

Gwen came back to her own body with a deep, hitching sob that caught in her throat. It made her choke on her own breath as she was violently dropped back into her own body, gasping and sobbing as she doubled over.

But Jack was already there to catch her, kneeling down abruptly beside her and wrapping his arms around her as Ianto hastily took the cap off her head, powering down the machine with a final whirring noise before dropping down to his knees beside Jack, on Gwen’s other side. Jack had taken her face in his hands and was looking into her eyes in concern, checking her over for damage she supposed. But as she looked back into his familiar face she all but saw his heart crack; yes, Jack had cared as much as she had about making sure Tosh had peace. But at the same time, she saw in his eyes in that moment, some part of him had wanted to believe that the woman he’d seen as like a little sister to him might be able to come back. Some part of him had never stopped hoping, until now.

She leaned her head against his shoulder, unable to look in his eyes anymore. “She’s gone. It’s done,” she whispered against his shoulder. “…She sends her love.”

She felt Jack lean his head against her neck, and Ianto come up and embrace her on the other side, Jack’s arm around his waist pulling him in close too as they both held onto Gwen, and to each other, so very tightly.

They stayed like that for a long, long time, the three of them in the Hub, so large and empty now. The silence of the medbay pressed in around them, broken only by the soft hum of machines, echoing against the tiles.

It really was just the three of them now, thought Gwen. And somehow, they’d have to find a way to carry on. She could feel Jack’s warm tears in her hair, feel Ianto’s hand on her back. She could feel both their heartbeats, layered over her own in her ears.

And if she concentrated hard, she thought she could still feel the ghostly sense memory of Tosh’s lips against hers, kissing Gwen – and the world – a fond farewell as she allowed herself to finally let go.

But not them. In the ringing silence of the Hub, Gwen kept holding on to Jack and Ianto. And they held her back, all three of them clinging on to one another for as long as they could.

**Author's Note:**

> ....I swear I actually do know a fair bit about computers but for this I ended up mostly throwing that out the window and just making shit up for Drama™. The computer is canonically sentient, so I hope you'll forgive me that. 
> 
> Anyway, I'm sorry if this was sad, I also have fix-it ideas that play with the concepts in Cascade re: Tosh uploading her consciousness to the Torchwood computer, as well as stuff related to the lore we got in The Torchwood Archive... I might write that someday too and it will probably be happier, but in the meantime, have this!
> 
> Please let me know what you think, and/or come say hi on tumblr @ultraviolet-eucatastrophe!


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